


Sacrifices

by Vivian Moon (vivian_moon)



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse)
Genre: Archenemies - Freeform, Community: marvel_kink, M/M, Ritual Sex, Sex Magic, Sex to save the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:18:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivian_moon/pseuds/Vivian%20Moon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a very simple calculation to make.</p>
<p>Reed really, <i>really</i> didn't like the answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sacrifices

The shimmering dome around Castle Doom was shrinking by the hour. Reed turned away from the window in frustration. The entire world was in peril - again - and the most useful thing he could find to do was calculate how long they had left until disaster.

Sue's soothing touch would have been welcome right now, but she was still unconscious, exhausted from the effort of maintaining the forcefield that had gotten them safely to the castle. He hated to leave her unattended in Victor's stronghold, but the rest of the F4 and their allies were stuck outside the dome, mindlessly singing the praises of Xuqul like everyone else.

Despite his best efforts, Reed had been unable to discover any scientific basis for the entity's power to control minds and draw energy from their enforced worship. Much as it galled him to admit it, it was Victor's knowledge of the mystical arts that they needed now.

He found his long-term nemesis in one of the castle's many guest rooms. The dribbly candles, stacks of ancient tomes, and web of symbols chalked on the floor were entirely expected; the carved wooden four-poster bed with green drapes that stood at the centre of it, somewhat less so.

Some ritual for entering the astral realm that required a prolonged period of unconscious, perhaps? But it was unlike Victor to pay much attention to his creature comforts. It was more his style to lie down in full armour on a cold stone floor and act as if it didn't bother him.

A young woman in servants' garb lurked nervously by the door. She didn't respond to Reed's polite greeting, but he took no offense. Victor's subjects had doubtless heard all kinds of propaganda about the fearsome Fantastic Four, and she might well not even speak English.

"Victor," he said, with a pleasant smile. He always did his best to keep up the civil approach, for all that it never seemed to help much. "Any luck?"

Victor's eyes gazed at him coldly through the eyeholes of the mask. "Richards. Perhaps you and your mongrel band are content to rely upon mere luck," he said acidly. "But some of us believe in a more methodical approach."

There was no point getting offended by anything Victor said, either. "You've found a way to break Xuqul's control?" Reed asked, cocking his head. If there was one thing he _could_ rely on, it was Victor's desire to elaborate on any field whatsoever where he though he knew better than Reed.

Sure enough, Victor lowered the book he was reading to give Reed a look of disdain.

"The Xuqul entity feeds on the vibrations created by strong shared emotion," he said. "In order to absorb emotions in sufficient quantities, it uses a crude form of telepathic control to link whole populations together and induce a state of religious ecstasy."

"So how can we fight it?" Reed asked, folding his arms and frowning.

" _You_ can do nothing," Victor said contemptuously. "The only way to interrupt the creature's control is to distract its attention with the ritual release of a more powerful form of emotion."

A dark suspicion was growing in Reed's mind about the presence of the bed and the girl. "Victor, you can't be serious," he gaped. The idea of Victor Von Doom performing some kind of sex magic was ludicrous; the stuff of bad movies and lurid _Daily Bugle_ headlines.

Yet it appeared Victor was fully serious. Even behind the mask, it was obvious that he was sneering. "You are a pathetically ignorant child, Richards," he said. "Playing with your mathematics as if numbers are the sum of everything. Even the feeblest practitioner of magic understands the importance of passion and sacrifice."

"You can't," Reed said in horror, shaking his head. He couldn't avoid glancing over at the servant girl, who by this stage he seriously _hoped_ didn't speak English. She couldn't be much more than twenty, if she was even that. What was Victor thinking?

Victor's gaze grew, if anything, even colder as he recognised the direction of Reed's. "Do you think me so dishonorable that I would conduct such a ritual with a participant who was not fully willing?" he said dangerously.

No. However arbitrary Victor's notions of honour might seem, there were some lines Reed didn't believe he would cross. But nonetheless- "She's your _subject_ , Victor," he said, still shaking his head. "You have complete control of her life! She _can't_ consent freely to you. You have power over her whether you're trying to wield it or not."

"Everyone here is my subject." Behind the mask there was the suggestion of a raised brow. "Unless, perhaps, you are volunteering your wife for the task?" Victor's eyes glittered with malicious amusement.

Logic said that it was an option like any other that had to be contemplated and assessed.

Logic didn't prompt the visceral cry of, "No!" that ripped immediately from Reed's throat.

Victor cocked his head. "Then who else in this castle do you believe meets your exacting criteria?" he said pointedly.

It was a very simple calculation to make.

Reed really, _really_ didn't like the answer.

"Um," he said, after a long silence. The silence grew considerably thicker.

He supposed there was a minor victory in the fact that he had, for the first time ever, rendered Victor Von Doom totally speechless.

It wasn't really much of a consolation.

~o~

Twenty minutes later, Reed found himself standing in the doorway with his shirt in his hand, wondering if he was really _that_ attached to his moral principles.

After all, while it was technically true that a sovereign could never _know_ if his subjects were genuine volunteers, that didn't mean it was impossible for them _to_ be. For all Reed knew, the young woman he'd just saved from this had been madly in love with Victor for years, and was now bitterly weeping over her lost chance. Stranger things had happened.

One of them was about to happen entirely too soon if he didn't come up with some way to get out of this. But right now, given the blankness of his mind, the nickname of Mr. Fantastic was looking embarrassingly inappropriate.

His sense of foreboding was only compounded by the fact that Victor clearly thought this was the most gloriously hilarious thing to ever happen to him.

"Second thoughts, Richards?" The voice from behind made him jump. Reed had been so lost in thought he hadn't heard Victor approach. He turned, about to say something - hopefully not a confession that it was more like seventy-third thoughts, though he was a bit at a loss for what else - but the words fell away from his dropped jaw.

Victor had changed out of his armour.

Oh, he still had the ever-present face mask, but he'd shed the rest of the suit and replaced it with a green silk robe. It wasn't anything that could be labelled as revealing, reaching almost down to the floor and tied so it exposed only a narrow triangle of his chest, but even seeing Victor's _hands_ bare was more shockingly intimate than walking in on someone else naked. Reed swallowed, feeling suddenly dizzy.

Of course, Victor projected nothing but his usual total confidence. He folded his arms across his chest, and Reed hastily raised his gaze to meet his eyes, feeling like a guilty teenager caught staring at a glimpse of cleavage.

Not that he was interested in Victor's body - well, he supposed he was _interested_ , in a vaguely scientific way, as one naturally would be at the chance to observe something not usually seen, but...

This was a very, very strange situation.

Victor emanated the sense that he was smirking. "Still so assured of your noble intentions?" he said, stepping forward into Reed's personal space.

Reed swallowed, and reminded himself what was at stake. "I'm not backing out," he said, though he couldn't stop himself from backing _up_.

After all, this wasn't the worst thing he'd had to do in the cause of saving the world. Possibly the weirdest, and definitely the most potentially humiliating, but not actually the _worst_. He was pretty sure.

"Then lie down," Victor said in an intense voice, and Reed stumbled back to sit on the edge of the four poster bed. He had a ridiculous urge to try and cover himself with his shirt, but that would achieve nothing beyond amusing the hell out of Victor, so he made himself cast it aside.

He retreated to sit further back on the bed, wrapping his arms round his knees. The idea of lying back was entirely too unnerving, far too vulnerable a position with Victor standing over him.

Was it too late to say he'd changed his mind?

"Stay there," Victor said ominously, lifting one of the ancient tomes from the table by the door. "Once the ritual is initiated, neither of us can leave the circle until it has reached completion."

Reed closed his eyes briefly, wishing Victor could have chosen a different way of phrasing it. He breathed slowly, not quite trusting his voice if he should try to speak.

Then Victor closed the door, and the forest of blood red candles stationed around the room lit up as one. It was almost an absurd parody of a seduction scene, but Reed wasn't laughing. His mouth felt dry.

He registered, rather distantly, that some part of him had still been waiting for Johnny and Ben and a camera crew to pop up out of nowhere right up until the moment that door closed.

But apparently not.

The candle flames all flickered as Victor began to chant the words of the ritual. They were in a language Reed didn't recognise, guttural and harsh. His mind couldn't catch at the unfamiliar syllables, only the rhythm of Victor's voice.

Victor's voice had always been his greatest quality; deep and rich, flavoured with just the subtlest hint of accent, capable of commanding armies and persuading those who had hundreds of reasons to doubt him. Listening to it now, in this smoky room that felt at once claustrophobic and impossibly exposed, Reed felt the energy of the ritual wash over him like static electricity. All his hairs slowly stood up on end, and his skin prickled. His breath caught inside his tight chest.

He felt like he was hypnotised, half-drugged. His gaze locked with Victor's, and he couldn't look away as Victor finished the chant and threw the book aside, heedless of where it landed. He shed the robe in a smooth shrug and stepped forward, pushing Reed down with a hard shove to the centre of his chest.

Reed didn't resist. The breath exploded out of him as he hit the mattress and bounced. It took a conscious effort not to just melt into the surface of the bed. He felt like he was on the verge of losing all cohesion. 

And then Victor was on top of him. His immediate instinct was to struggle, wrestle for control just like any other fight, but this felt different; bare skin under his hands, yielding flesh, warm muscle. Victor usually smelled like metal and ozone, like a lightning strike in a smithy; he still did, but now there were human scents mixed in there, sweat and some kind of plain unscented soap, and it was weird, even after knowing him in college, to think of Victor as a man who washed and sweated and took off his armour and did normal human things...

-And, oh shit, when exactly in the middle of all this did Reed start getting hard?

Reed struggled harder, fighting back against- he didn't even know: fear of humiliation, the thought of what was coming, something else his mind didn't want to acknowledge. Victor's hands - Victor's _bare_ hands, God - were tearing at his pants, and he very definitely wanted them to be _off_ at the same time as he didn't want Victor to be anywhere near them. He wanted-

He didn't _know_ what he wanted, but he _wanted_.

His body wasn't cooperating, or maybe it was doing exactly what it was told but his conscious mind wasn't the one in the driving seat. With his powers he ought to be able to squirm away, and yet somehow he found himself pressing up towards Victor instead; applying force directly against an opposing force, that was stupid, that was textbook maximum effort for minimum gain. And somehow, despite - or because of? - his best efforts he was naked now, and trying to keep Victor at arm's length wasn't _working_...

(He could laugh. When had trying to keep Victor at arm's length _ever_ worked?)

Victor let out a savage grunt of triumph as he got Reed's shoulders pinned against the bed. He was so close that Reed could see his teeth flash in part-smirk, part-snarl behind the grille of his mask.

It was only at that moment that it occurred to Reed that, uniquely among their many encounters, neither one of them had said a word yet. In that flash of startlement he let his guard down for an instant... and it was all the opportunity Victor needed to drive his legs apart with a knee and force his way in.

_God_.

It wasn't remotely gentle, and it should have hurt like hell, but Reed's powers reacted instinctively, stretching his muscles to accommodate the sudden intrusion. Stretching his muscles in ways that he'd never even _thought_ about using them before.

It was a burst of sensation, explosive, unclassifiable, and he clamped his teeth down to choke off a groan that was more than anything a desperate sound of pressure released. He held the sound in, but Victor's eyes flared, and Reed knew he'd seen the reaction anyway.

And this was still a battle of wills that was nowhere near over.

Victor's hands were at his throat, not quite strangling, thumbs digging in just hard enough to make Reed feel hazy in the smoky room. And still he pressed back just as hard against Victor's shoulders, no longer sure if he was trying to throw him off or just force him to- Do what?

His mind skidded away from the idea of trying to classify what he wanted Victor to do right now. He didn't want. He wasn't thinking. He was just enduring, just reacting, just...

His body was moving frantically against Victor's almost of its own accord, matching him thrust for thrust something close to defiance. He could hold back the sounds that he wanted (didn't want) to make, but he couldn't control his harsh breathing, and he could hear Victor's, angry and animal. The pleasure was building in him against his will; physical reaction, he couldn't help it, he didn't want- didn't want-

He let out a ragged cry that was almost like agony as the orgasm was ripped hard out of him. He slumped back against the bed, body beginning to puddle at the edges as he lost his ability to keep himself together. Barely another thrust, and Victor was done too - stubbornly silent, his arms and neck muscles held rigid, even though Reed could feel his body's betraying spasms.

But even Victor had to sag forward after that, the cold metal of his mask falling against Reed's shoulder. For fifteen slumped seconds of panted breaths, they were the most at peace in each other's company that they'd ever been.

Of course, there was no way it would last.

Moments later, Victor rolled away and sat up, swiping his robe from the floor and retying it as he stood up. He strode to the narrow arrow-slit window to look out, already as effectively rearmoured as if he was back in the metal.

Reed was still halfway melted onto the surface of the bed, and not quite ready to think about moving, let alone contemplate the daunting task of getting cleaned up and properly covered. He concentrated on breathing and remembering what shape he was supposed be while Victor surveyed the state of the landscape outside.

"The energy field is gone," Victor said, blessedly businesslike as he turned back. "No doubt Doctor Strange or one of your other associates took care of matters while the entity was... suitably distracted." There was an edge of a smirk in his voice, but Reed was sufficiently exhausted that it was easy to ignore it.

"Okay. So, it worked," he said, running his hands back through his sweaty hair. That was something. He didn't really like to think what it would have meant if they'd done this and it _hadn't_ worked.

"It did," Victor said.

Good. So now they could get onto the 'never speak of this again' portion of proceedings. Reed sat up, and immediately buried his face in his hands with a heavy sigh. He might as well accept that any retention of his dignity was a lost cause.

"I trust your... sense of honour... has been satisfied?" Victor said. No doubt hoping to get a rise out of Reed with the implication beneath it, but Reed had done all the rising he was going to be capable of for a couple of hours. He lowered his hands and gave a polite smile.

"Yes. It has," he said simply, refusing to hear the unspoken insinuation.

"Excellent," Victor said. Reed saw him arch an eyebrow behind the mask. "I look forward to seeing you explain your reasoning to your wife." He swept out before Reed could respond.

Reed flopped back on the bed and pulled the covers over his face, and wondered if it was feasible to stay there for the rest of his natural life.


End file.
